Soon a little column of smoke would rise toward the smoke hole, and my father would call, “Up, little daughter; up, sons! Get up, wives! The sun is up. To the river for your bath! Hasten!” And he would go up on the roof to look if enemies were about and if his horses were safe. My mothers were already up when I crept from my bed still sleepy, but glad that morning had come.
But if the weather was cold, we did not go to the river to bathe. An earthen pot full of water stood by one of the posts near the fire. It rested in a ring of bark, to keep it from falling. My mothers dipped each a big horn spoon full of water, filled her mouth, and, blowing the water over her palms, gave her face a good rubbing. Red Blossom washed my face in the same way. I did not like it very much, and I would shut my eyes and pucker my face when I felt the cold water. Red Blossom would say, “Why do you pucker up your face? You make it look like a piece of old, dried, buffalo skin.”
Her face washed, Red Blossom sat on the edge of her bed and finished her toilet. She had a little fawn-skin bag, worked with red porcupine quills. From this bag she took her hairbrush, a porcupine tail mounted on a stick, with the sharp points of the quills cut off. She brushed her hair smooth, parting it in two braids that fell over each shoulder nearly hiding her ears. Red Blossom was no longer young, but her black tresses had not a grey hair in them.
She now opened her paint bag, put a little buffalo grease on her two fingers, pressed the tips lightly in the dry paint, and rubbed them over her cheeks and face. She also rubbed a little red into the part of her hair.
Meanwhile, the pot had been put on the fire. We Indians did not eat many things at a meal as white men do. Usually, breakfast was of one thing, often buffalo meat dried, and boiled to soften it. When a buffalo was killed, the meat was cut into thin slices, and some parts, into strips. These were dried in the open air over the earth lodge fire or in the smoke of a small fire out-of-doors. For breakfast, a round earthen pot was filled with water, dried meat put in, and the water brought to a boil. Red Blossom used to lift out the hot meat slices on the point of a stick, laying them on a bit of clean rawhide.
A rough bench stood back of the fireplace, a cottonwood plank, with ends resting on two blocks chopped from a tree trunk. My grandmother Turtle sat on this bench to eat her meals. My two mothers sat beside her, or on the floor near the meat they were serving. My father ate sitting on the edge of his couch. A wooden bowl, heaped with steaming meat, was set before each. Our fingers did for forks.
Boiling the meat in water made a thin broth which we used for a hot drink. It was very good, tasting much like white man’s beef tea. We had no cups; but we had big spoons made of buffalo horn, and ladles, of mountain-sheep horn. Either of these did very well for drinking cups. Sometimes we used mussel shells.
A common breakfast dish was mapee[5] naka-pah,[6] or pounded-meal mush. From her cache pit Red Blossom took a string of dried squash slices. She cut off a length and tied the ends together, making a ring four or five inches in width. This ring and a double handful of beans she dropped in a pot of water, and set on the fire. When boiled, she lifted the ring out with a stick, with her horn ladle mashed the softened squash slices in a wooden bowl and put them back in the pot.